OUR ADVENTURE AT THE FLUME.
By W. L.
dark, solemn-looking place it was, and although Fred and I were as dauntless explorers as Stanley or Greely, our courage began to ooze away as we looked in at the gloomy flume from which issued the cold and sluggish water. We had come upon the ruined archway of an old mill, still standing with crumbling walls above the slow-moving waters of its former busy tail-race. The low, dark archway was overhung with birch, witch-hazel, and thimbleberry; and as we peered into its blackness, suggestions of dragons and serpents, castle-dungeons and witches' caverns and monsters' dens came into our minds already sufficiently full of wild, boyish fancies and strange imaginings.
THE ENTRANCE TO THE FLUME.
Fred "double dared" me to go in, and I was foolish enough to think that no boy of spirit could refuse a "double dare." So, cutting weapons from the sapling birches, we stepped into the cold and repulsive-looking water. B-r-r-r!—what a shiver it gave us!
It was late in the afternoon. The shadows that lay in the deep ravines along the mountain-side looked strange and weird; and as we stepped within the gloom of the archway, a blue heron, gaunt and ungainly, with its twisted neck and long, dangling legs, flew down the creek, uttering its harsh and dismal cry.
Neither Fred nor I was feeling remarkably lion-hearted; the call of the heron had brought our hearts almost into our mouths; and just then, as we stood hesitating and peering in, something moved in the darkness beyond us, and a black object that seemed, as Fred said, "as big as an eagle" flung itself out of the shadows full into our startled faces.
Panic-stricken, we turned to fly. The bottom of the pool was slippery, the roof of the archway was low; Fred's feet flew up, my head received a sudden bump, and both of us went down in six inches of water.
With a shriek of terror from each valiant explorer thus stricken down by the magic spells of the goblin of the den, we scrambled to our feet, dripping and disheartened, and made for the light; and as we did so we caught a glimpse of our assailant skimming away in the twilight—neither goblin, witch, nor monster, but only a harmless and equally frightened black bat.